


reAdy to run AwAy

by failsafe



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Developing Relationship, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 04:15:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer Hastings just stopped. Now she's ready to start moving again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	reAdy to run AwAy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [presentpathos](https://archiveofourown.org/users/presentpathos/gifts).



> I'm really sorry about missing the deadline (yesterday), but the defaulting was just me being mixed up because of a crazy semester. I didn't account for being this busy into November when I signed up. Anyway, I had been working on your fic since last month, so I didn't want you to not have it even though I made the silly mistake. At the time I started writing, I hadn't seen much past Spencer ending up in Radley, so as I moved past it I decided to be a tiny bit canon-divergent so I could keep writing at my present level of watching. I really hope you enjoy it!

Deciding to just _go_ had never seemed like an option. Her entire life, Spencer Hastings had the next step spread out ahead of her, glowing goalposts set off just a short ways in the distance already leapt over by a long line of Hastings before her. But that had been _before_.

Before rejection letters, before death. She thought she'd ran head on into a statistic when she'd gone to a friend's funeral before she was 18. That had been before she'd had to lose someone twice—someone for whom there would never have been such a big turn out. Sometimes she remembered the way she'd never really said goodbye and she couldn't breathe.

But twenty years old and still in Rosewood, she breathed just a little easier one night in early January. Her breath formed little crystal clouds in front of her mouth as she folded her arms, standing outside the kitchen door of the Hastings house. Nominally thermal fabric covered her arms down to just above her wrists, but she made no real effort to tug the fabric down further against the cold. The door opened behind her and she didn't flinch.

“Spence, come on, aren't you freezing?” Emily demanded with soft, polite concern as she hauled a duffel bag from shoulder into the open trunk of her car.

“I'm not cold,” Spencer said, and her voice caught somewhere, resonating just at the front of her face and warming it. It was like singing and like having a cold at once. She shut her eyes, took a deep breath of the cold air, and opened them once more to give a final glance back to her house. Then she looked across the yard at the barn. She was honestly surprised it was still standing after everything that had happened.

“Spencer,” Emily said, standing up. Spencer notices the way her black hair moves in the softly moving cold air. She's got a little glistening strand wrapped around just to the left side of her face. She looks clean, healthy, happy. Spencer knows that if she looked at herself in the mirror, she'd see little dark circles under her eyes that concealer couldn't quite touch. She wondered when the last time she'd had an easy time sleeping at been.

Even the quiet was something she'd stopped trusting a long time ago.

“You _need_ a coat,” Emil finished, marching into the house once more without asking for permission to get her one.

Spencer felt the warmth of the coat Emily helped her with wrap around her like a big, smooth marshmallow. Something cold and damp—stray snowflake or melted drop, she doesn't notice—grazed the tip of her nose and she smiled. Emily reached down to help her with the zipper and she reached down, touching Emily's surprisingly warm hands with her own icy fingers. Emily jumped and, finally, Spencer laughed.

“I've got it,” she assured Emily, trying for the zipper.

Emily raised her eyebrows and tilted her head at her.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Got it,” she promised.

“You really ready to do this, Spencer?”

“Ready as I'll ever be,” Spencer said, her voice low and quite close to monotone.

“Spence—“

She looked up, furrowing her brow a bit as she realized she was doing it again, drifting off into the quiet that was peace and wasn't peace, in her head here. It wasn't Radley, but the place had left its marks inside her that didn't seem to be going away anytime soon.

“Look, Em, I know... I'm—if you're not sure, I can just go back,” Spencer said, her tone fitfully lifting as she glanced back toward the Hastings house. Looking at the kitchen island through the frosty window, it looked like a prison. She started when she felt Emily's hand reach up and touch her cheek like it hasn't been a year and a half since they were close enough to touch at all. Spencer looked back into her eyes, paying close attention.

“I'm not leaving you here again. I've gotten you this far. Nobody... needs to be here. Not like this. The rest of us got out and so should you.”

“The rest of you weren't leaving behind as much blood as I will be.”

“You never killed anybody.”

“Didn't I?”

“No.”

Spencer had been good at debate once. She found herself surprised by the simple response, enough to shut up. Suddenly a little emboldened, she stepped around Emily and headed for the passengers' side door, climbing into Emily's car. She sighed a little in response to the warm air pushing forcefully out of the vents and into the interior of the car as she squirmed around and strapped herself in.

“That's better!” Emily called out after her, not minding that her voice echoed down along the length of the yard that neither of them were likely to see again for a long time.

“Get in,” Spencer tried calling out as she rolled down the window, looking back over her shoulder. Her voice wasn't that good at screaming anymore. She was answered with a smile for her effort, though, and for once that kind of congratulations for failure just didn't seem to matter anymore. With that, she could almost he satisfied.

The car moved and Spencer felt herself pressed back into the seat, just an inch closer back toward the house. There was a paranoia creeping into her veins, waiting for a skid along especially prepared ice, spinning them around and making sure the last thing they saw before meeting their deaths head on with a light pole was the letter _'A.'_

But all of that was gone now. The only thing left in Rosewood was ghosts, and because of that Spencer Hastings, brilliant but uneducated glaring scar on the Hastings' name, had become one, too. The car reached the road without incident, and when Spencer decided that she had to trust it, she reached down with her right hand and released the lever at the side of the seat. The incline of the back increased sharply until she was lying nearly flat. She was pretty sure that she was hidden from plain view, and she didn't know whether or not she should be. She wondered how long it would take her parents to notice or care that she'd gone. She kind of doubted that they would at all. Maybe her mom would for a while, but then there'd be a good excuse contrived, and after that they'd convince themselves of it and thus relieve Spencer of all further duty to the family she let down.

She sighed with relief and looked over at Emily, turning into her side in a way that definitely broke any seat belt law Rosewood might still happen to have. At this point, such tiny laws seemed utterly trivial. People had, for a while there, been as likely to get killed by fastening their seat belts as not.

“Where are we going, Em?” she asked. She knew, but it was rhetorical. She wanted to hear her friend tell the truth again, set her free. Once upon a time, Mona had characterized Emily as the weak one. She'd seen something in Spencer she liked. Now she could only imagine that the roles had reversed. Or maybe they hadn't and the ruin her life had come to was only more proof that A was finally over.

“You're coming with me,” Emily said simply, smiling so it lights up the darkened car with a familiar moonlight Spencer had forgotten.

“ _Where_?” Spencer whined, reaching across the center console to gently tap Emily's arm. She ended up hanging onto the downy fabric and the soft skin at the place along her wrist the sleeve ended.

“Out of Rosewood,” Emily answered, excited, smooth honey on her tongue as she kept grinning, insufferably.

“You didn't bring me any coffee. You might want to consider your next answer very carefully.”

“Running away?”

Spencer thought about it for a moment. She knew that they had a place to land, knew Emily was just teasing. It felt good, having someone to do that with again. She nuzzled slightly into Emily's car's upholstery and she noticed that even the passenger's side smelled a little of chlorine and more strongly of her hair. She'd never thought about what her hair felt like before. She looked at her mouth, waiting on her to speak again.

“I missed you, Em,” she commented quietly, in case saying it any louder would dare someone to take something else away from her.

“Are you really okay with this, Spence?”

“I want to be.”

The car slowed and Spencer's stomach jolted with panic. She reached out toward the steering wheel and only stopped herself with the bare minimum of reason that she could force through the panic.

“No—“ she warned, pleaded.

“Whoa, Spencer, I'm just... listening,” Emily said, widening her eyes and leveling her gaze at her, uninterrupted for as long as she could dare.

“... I want to go. I want to go with you. You... You came back for me.”

“I was just waiting on the right time,” Emily explained, glancing down at her lap while her eyes were focused back on the road.

“I know. And now I... wanna do it. Run away. With you.”

“So that's what we're doing?” Emily confirmed, lighting everything up with her happy-showing teeth.

“Yeah. Spencer Hastings is running away,” Spencer replied, smiling easily as she pushed herself up against the seat, glancing back one more time at the disappearing streets behind her without one hint of regret.

 


End file.
